I had a very busy few days in the aftermath of the Rolex 24 and testing for Penske and Porsche at Sebring. I flew home to Southern California and went to check out AMA Supercross at Anaheim. My friends and new partners Troy Lee Designs are fielding a Supercross Lites team for the first time this year, so I got the chance to hang out with Troy and the whole team, as well as a bunch of the folks from Oakley. Juan Pablo Montoya was out to hang for the night – he’s a fellow Oakley athlete, and a big motocross fan, too. I was at Anaheim for the daytime program and the quail heat races. From there the next stop of the night was right down the street at one of SoCal’s finest indoor kart tracks, Dromo1. There, I was competing in the 1st annual Make-A-Wish Foundation 12-Hour endurance karting race. It started at midnight on Sunday morning and ended at noon, which was a wild format. I’ve done that once before, down in Brazil.

I showed up pretty uninformed, but it turned out to be pretty serious – there were motorhomes to hang out in, a bunch of endurance karting specialists, some local Dromo1 experts, and a handful of professional drivers. Boris Said was there, Sam Hubinette and Tanner Foust, and my friend / Rolex GT Champion Craig Stanton, to name a few. I ended up driving with Craig and a couple of local Dromo specialists, and we went in as a bit of a dark horse going up against so many indoor karting vets.

I knew we had a good shot at the beginning because our whole team was up to pace, but as soon as the race started I realized it was seriously competitive. The race had pit stops, full-course cautions and guys literally getting carted out in ambulances. We were turning 20 second laps, and I ended up driving two stints of the maximum 90 minutes, so a total of 540 laps. My team decided to stick me in for the last stint of the race, and I figured out that with 20 second laps and constant traffic, the same skills applied from sportscar racing that I’m used to. It’s all about strategy, endurance, and managing the traffic. We ended up winning the event, which was a great result and a lot of fun.

From Dromo1, I headed to my hometown to watch the Super Bowl with some friends, then was off to Palmdale, California on Monday to drive at the Streets of Willow for a Men’s Health magazine story. I coached Matthew Fox, from the hit show LOST, and showed him a few tricks about driving Porsches, and we had a great time. We had a Porsche 911 Turbo and a street GT3RS from Porsche, we turned some hard laps, and got Matt up to speed a bit. He plays the character of Racer X in the new Speed Racer movie, so they wanted to highlight what the real thing would be like for him. Look for it in the next few issues, he’ll be the cover story.

Today, I’m headed off to Europe for a couple of weeks – first to Stuttgart to do official photography for Porsche and Penske’s 2008 promotions, and then it’s off to the Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands for 10 days for Porsche fitness camp. All of the factory drivers will be out there with our group of Porsche doctors. We’ve been working with the same people for years – they’re all from Universities in Germany and have backgrounds in Olympic cycling, swimming, and skiing. We’ll do about 70 hours of sports over 10 days – working on strength, cross-training, cardio, and some sensory motor and coordination stuff. It’s great to have that kind of resource from Porsche.

Editor's Note: Patrick Long will be a regular contributor to the WINDING ROAD blog throughout this season. This is his first column.